Tag: #FunWithFacts

The origin of April Fools’ Day is kind of like April Fools’ pranks themselves. If you read through the history, it’s hard to tell truth from fiction. The celebrated tradition of pranking might have started as part of a festival to praise the humble OR it might have been a way to ridicule a captured enemy before his execution or – no, wait – it was because some people got confused about when to celebrate the new year.

It might have started in France. Or maybe England. Or Rome. For certain. Maybe. It’s kind of hard to say…

According to Infoplease, one convincing explanation was provided by Joseph Boskin, a Professor of History at Boston University. He linked the practice to the Roman emperor Constantine, when a group of court jesters told Constantine that they didn’t get enough respect and could do a better job ruling the land. The emperor decided to appoint a jester named Kugel as king for the day, and Kugel took the opportunity to pass an edict created an annual absurdity day. When Boskin’s story was widely reported in 1983, it sounded convincing. But, as it turned out, he was just being feisty with an Associated Press reporter who wouldn’t take “I dunno” for an answer to “Where’d the tradition start, professor smartypants?” So as a joke he’d made up the story and used the reference to “kugel” because the reporter was in New York and he thought, well, everyone in New York eats kugel, don’t they?… When the AP fellow asked him to spell “kugel,” he wondered if the joke would be taken seriously. It was.

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St. Urho is the patron saint of Finland, and March 16th is a celebration day for great merriment and drinking throughout all of the North. As it says on www.sturho.com, St. Urho was the saint who drove the grasshoppers out of Finland, saving the wine crop. His colors are Royal Purple and Nile Green. He did this by uttering the phrase: “Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen” (roughly translated: “Grasshopper, grasshopper, go to Hell!”).

Now, you might perhaps suggest that there are no grasshoppers in the coniferous forests and ice lands of Finland, where 25% of the land lies above the Arctic Circle. Thank to St. Urho, of course! You might perhaps suggest that Finland is not particularly known for its great wines, but neither is Ireland known for its vodka despite the ballyhoo about the potato crop. And Finland is known for its great drinking, as it ranks 9th in the world for death by alcoholism, compared with the US which is a mere 39th and Ireland which is way down at #63.